A week of parties–Langston & Lightning McQueen

The last time I was in Nashville visiting my nephews, I made a promise to Langston that I would make him a Lightning McQueen rainbow cake for his birthday.

So the Friday after Thanksgiving, I had the boys all to myself.  All three of us made the cake together. I wish I had some pictures to show you because it was all so cute (and so professional!) Desmond, who is only three, cracked his egg without getting any shell in the mixture. (Langston and I only got a tiny bit of shell in the mixture but we got it all out.) We followed all the directions to the letter and then Langston decided on the colors. We had special Wilton Lightning McQueen colors but tried to use very little of them per instructions from their mother. She prefers that their food be as natural and organic as possible.

Langston is a pretty easy going guy so he was okay with the colors being muted. We chose three colors plus the uncolored batter, which was yellow. And then we just plopped all the colors inside the pan with
a spoon. I wish I had taken a picture before it went in the oven or even more pictures of the slices. The colors were orange, seafoam green, dark yellow and then the light yellow batter. If you look really hard you can see the blue in the slice I’m holding.

We decided to let it cool overnight and then frost the next day. I made a basic buttercream frosting and then came the fun part. We determined that Langston would be the Director, I would be the Worker and Desmond, who is three, would be the Assistant. They took their jobs very seriously. Langston would refer to the Wilton picture and directions and then direct me which nozzle to use and where each color should be piped. Desmond would get the colors ready for me. Again, we made the colors a lot less vivid than the Wilton picture so that we wouldn’t have to use so much coloring. The main body color was a little harder to pipe as it warmed up so I should have made it in two batches. We worked very quickly as everyone was waiting for us to finish so that they could eat it and open presents.

I used a new piping bag filling technique that you can see here. Basically, the frosting goes into saran wrap, then you fold it over in to a pouch. You grab each end and sling it around until the ends become really tight and can be fed into the piping bag. (It’s much easier to understand if you watch the link.) This is the best tip I’ve ever had for frosting. I only had to use one piping bag for all those different colors. And it only flew out of my hands once! Eek.


When we finished the top, we decided to write Langston’s name and his age on the sides. We also wrote the number 5 in Cantonese. Langston drew the symbol for me and I copied it.

We were all very excited when it was finally complete. Desmond even kissed me!    
We all gathered around, sang “Happy Birthday” and then Langston made a wish and blew out the candles. Afterwards, he opened all his gifts and then we finally got to enjoy the cake! Many people (I won’t name names) had more than one slice.




  Aren’t they the cutest?